God Restores

For God so loved the world...

It's one of the most famous Scriptures in all the world, known by heart by many Christians, embroidered on decorative pillows, painted on piece of old barn wood and placed above the fireplace. 

The question that comes next is often: okay, great, but do you know the next verse? The one where Christ has not come to condemn the world, but to save it? 

But I think there's more to this passage even than that. In fact, I think our human brains process this passage most deeply if we start not one, but two verses later, and then read it backward. So, then, right in the heart of John 3, we would have this passage: 

Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God's one and only Son (v. 18). For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him (v.17). For God so loved the world that He sent His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him will be saved (v.16). 

See, verse 16 - that verse that we know and love - talks about the way that God saves us, that He restores us. But without the context of verse 18, we don't understand. Not fully. 

Verse 18 reminds us that we're condemned already. We're condemned because we don't believe - our willingness to eat the fruit in the garden tells us that much, let alone all the little acts of rebellion that we still engage in on a day-to-day basis. Like worrying about our future or trying to make plans for tomorrow or thinking we can figure it all out ourselves. Those who do not believe are condemned. That is where our broken story starts. 

And into our condemnation, God sends His Son. And it's easy to think...well, crud. Here comes God to lay down the hammer. To smite us. To put a heavy burden on us because we have not believed, because we are rebellious, because we are down here doing our own thing and not His thing. Here comes the angry God we've read about in the Old Testament. But no, Jesus has not come to condemn us, but to save us. 

But why? 

Because God so loves the world. 

Do you see what happens when you read this passage backward? You lay the foundation for understanding how broken and backward we are, how we have condemned ourselves already, and by the time you get to the love of Christ, you feel your deep need for it. You understand what it means that God has not come to condemn the world, but to save it, because you already feel your own condemnation...and you stand in need of that grace. 

That grace that then hits like water in a desert. God has not come to condemn you - you're doing a good enough job of that yourself; He has come to save you, and that's what you desperately need. 

Do you get it? Do you see it? This is what the Lord is doing. 

Not condemning. 

Saving. 

Loving.